


For Whatever It's Worth

by tiani_j



Series: When All Else Fails [2]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiani_j/pseuds/tiani_j
Summary: How can Eggsy tell three confused, if not livid, colleagues that he’s fucked off to the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night? He has ten minutes to figure that out.





	For Whatever It's Worth

**Author's Note:**

> (Gotta read the first one in this series to have any idea what's happening, sorry)
> 
> Sorry for the wait! I won't bore you with the details but yeah, I know this took longer than it should've. One factor is that I tried to do a re-write of the Boss Battle™ with this version of events, but it didn't work out well, haha.  
> Once again, the title is from a Together Pangea [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6DeWwL8zVA) that has nothing to do with any of this.
> 
> I don't know what season it is in the movies, so it can be towards the end of autumn/fall.

Eggsy wakes at around quarter-past-six, according to his phone. He blinks at the display, eyes bleary. No missed calls and no texts; the others mustn’t be up yet. He sits up from his slumped position with a yawn and looks around. 

They’re stopped at a gas station, still out of town, and Whiskey is nowhere to be seen. The highway – or it could be any old road, Eggsy has no idea what constitutes a highway in the middle of nowhere – stretches as far as the eye can see in both directions. It curves away in the distance, all bordered by farmland and occasional driveways. 

The gas station is tiny, with only two sets of pumps and a small convenience store. Blinds cover the windows of the store and its door. The only hint of life is the ‘OPEN’ sign between the blinds and the glass.

Eggsy fumbles for the door handle and gets it open. His legs ache in protest when he swings them out of the car, sneakers biting into the dirt. He doesn’t bother closing the door when he stretches, arms thrown above his head.

A pickup truck with a trailer zooms away, further down the road, and another car approaches on the horizon. Without the wind, the newly risen sun tries its best to beam down heat. Eggsy has spent much of the past week indoors, in meetings discussing the details of the Kingsman and Statesman partnership. How and where funds will be allocated, what information they’ll share, protocol for collaborating, and a dozen other things. 

The store’s door opens and shuts with a clatter of a bell and the glass rattling in its frame. Eggsy turns just in time to catch the water bottle that’s lobbed at his head.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty. Wasn’t sure you were gonna wake up anytime soon,” Whiskey says with a grin, swinging the car keys in one hand.

Eggsy twists the cap of the bottle off and takes a chug. He doesn’t bother with a greeting. “Where are we?” he asks, setting a hand against his neck as he stretches it.

Whiskey yanks open the door and leans on the roof, then nods towards the road. “Two hundred miles from HQ, give or take. It’s about ten minutes from here to the diner we’re headed for, and then fifteen to the house.” He pauses and looks to Eggsy, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. “Your neck hurt?”

“Not much.” Eggsy gets into the car and closes the door, despite his legs protesting that they need more of a stretch than that. “How far from town is the house?” The units he grew up in were always within walking distance of a shopping centre. And even Harry’s house - or, Eggsy’s house, he corrects - that’s now dust was down the road from a corner store. 

“About twenty minutes,” Whiskey says, as if it’s not that far. He hops into the driver’s seat, shuts the door, and revs the engine. “So, we keep going northwest to the diner, and then turn south for the house. If we were going to Paducah, we’d keep on going northwest.” He drives away from the gas station, glancing at the mirrors before pulling back onto the main road. “You might wanna think about what you’re gonna tell your friends, on the way.”

Eggsy almost forgot about that. He takes another drink from his water bottle, wondering how on earth he should approach it. How can he tell three confused, if not livid, colleagues that he’s fucked off to the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night? He has ten minutes to figure that out.

-

The diner is cute, for lack of a better word. Cleaner than the gas station, easily, with an asphalt parking lot and a sign that proclaims, ‘24/7 Diner’ in curly red lettering. The parking lot has four other cars; two pickups, a minivan, and a small hatchback. A mechanic’s shop is next door, along with another gas station.

Whiskey tuts at the dirt on the car and the bugs in the car’s grille, muttering about washing it all off later. 

Eggsy follows him into the diner, out of place in his dark grey tracksuit. The other customers seem to have a uniform of jeans and plain shirts. Old number plates decorate the eggshell-white walls, above red booth-seats and yellow-speckled tables. Linoleum squeaks against his sneakers when he scuffs them against the floor.

Whiskey stops at a booth a few rows away from the corner, far from the other patrons. “Something wrong?” he asks as he takes a seat. 

“I left my weapons at HQ,” Eggsy mutters, sliding into the seat on the opposite side of the table. The signet ring and watch are in the pockets of his suit, but everything else wasn’t in the room or didn’t come to mind.

“There’s a stash at the house, don’t worry,” Whiskey says, pushing one of the laminated, pamphlet menus towards the younger man. “We’re not on a mission. Cool it a little, alright?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy says as he snatches the menu and flicks through it. “Not on a mission.” He sits up straighter and keeps his elbows off the table.

Whiskey is less concerned with good posture, leant back against the seat with an arm slung over its edge. He takes his sunglasses off to look out the window.

Eggsy catches his eye by accident, then goes back to perusing the menu.

The waitress appears, saving him from having to say anything. “What can I get you?” she asks, smoothing down her white apron over a peach-coloured uniform dress. 

A ringtone interrupts him. His eyes go wide as he scrambles to fish the phone from his pocket. He’d hoped to get the upper hand, break the news gently before they realised anything was wrong. Too late for that, he supposes, looking at the caller ID. Roxy.

“Just coffee for now, thanks,” Whiskey says to the waitress.

She scribbles on her notepad with a nod and bustles back to the counter.

Eggsy picks up the call with a preemptive wince. “Hello?”

“ _Eggsy, are you okay?_ ” Roxy asks, distressed.

“Uh, yeah. Everything’s fine,” Eggsy says. Everything is decidedly not fine; he thought about what he wanted to say on the drive over, but it’s all jumbled around in his head. 

“ _Then what the fuck are you doing?_ ” Roxy shouts down the phone, apparently trying to give him tinnitus.

Eggsy draws the phone away from his ear and turns the volume down. Whiskey chuckles. Eggsy ignores him.

“ _-tracker in your glasses, which you forgot to put on, by the way, says you’re outside a diner near someplace called Paducah_ ,” Roxy says. “ _Over three hundred k’s from HQ. We thought- the glasses being in the trunk of the car-_ ”

“I swear, I’m fine; I left the glasses in my bag. I can explain,” Eggsy tries to keep his tone neutral, but it comes out unsure.

“ _By all means,_ ” Merlin says.

Which- great. Eggsy must be on speakerphone. “I want to take a vacation. I feel like I’m gonna lose it, if I go back to London straight away.” He searches for a better explanation, something to clarify why, but nothing comes to mind. Nothing he wants to say in a diner, before breakfast, and while sober, anyway.

“ _This seems like something that we should have discussed prior to you taking a vacation,_ ” Harry says.

“ _In the middle of the night_ ,” Merlin adds.

“ _How did you get all the way out there, anyway? Statesman records show you didn’t take one of their vehicles,_ ” Roxy says.

“I, uh. Well, I got some advice-”

“ _From who?_ ” Harry says, suspicious.

“I’m getting to that,” Eggsy reassures them all. “Just, give me a minute. I’ve been-” he searches for the right word and starts over instead. “Whenever something bad happens, I bottle it up. I had to focus on, y’know. Getting the job done.” He doesn’t want to get anyone’s attention by saying something dumb like ‘saving the world’.

The waitress reappears, coffee pot in one hand and two cups in the other. She sets the cups on the table and pours the coffee with practised ease. She is, mercifully, uninterested in the phone call.

Eggsy clears his throat and continues, volume low. “I get that we put things on the sidelines when we’ve got a job, but we finished it, and it’s still like that. I can’t do that right now, not after it’s over.

“Merlin, I know you feel guilty about us getting hacked, but _I_ left Charlie’s arm in the car. I went to my friend’s birthday party instead of getting rid of it. I insisted on Harry going to Italy while he was still seeing butterflies, and that-” he refuses to say ‘backfired’, “went to hell.” 

No-one on the other side of the line says anything, waiting for Eggsy to finish his rant. He casts an uncertain glance at Whiskey and gets a small nod in return.

“I’ve been botching things up for a while now, and if I want to help rebuild and not go into a spin, I need a break,” Eggsy says. He pulls the phone away and takes a sip of his coffee, if only for something to do. Coffee always tastes like bitter crap, but it’s somehow even worse without milk and sugar. He looks out the window as he brings the phone back to his ear.

“ _Eggsy_ ,” Roxy says, sympathetic, “ _come back to Louisville, or catch a flight back to London. We can get you a few weeks off, I’m sure. You can be with your family, somewhere nice-_ ”

“And put them in danger, if someone targets us again? Fuck that.”

“ _We understand, Eggsy, but you can’t just run off like this. Come back, and we can talk things through_ ,” Merlin says.

“I can’t go back,” Eggsy says, tone as neutral as he can manage. He has an irking feeling that if he went back, it wouldn’t be easy to leave again. He can’t contribute, though; not at the moment. If anything is going to change - to be different this time around - he has to set that in motion. 

Merlin sighs. Harry doesn’t deign to say anything. Roxy breaks the ensuing silence. “ _You said you got advice? Who did you talk to?_ ”

Eggsy taps the toe of one sneaker against the linoleum absentmindedly. “Look, I was out walking, last night, and then Whiskey almost hit me with his car-”

“ _Whiskey?_ ” Roxy parrots, incredulous. Merlin grumbles something unintelligible. 

Eggsy ignores them. “-when he was leaving for a vacation, and we got talking, and now I’m going with him.” He pokes at a coffee stain on the table with a short fingernail. “For a bit.” 

Merlin speaks up again. “ _And you didn’t think to talk to anyone about it?_ ” he says, doubtful.

“It was two in the morning, you lot were asleep,” Eggsy protests. “And I talked to him about it, so-”

“ _Well, that’s just great_ ,” Merlin says with as much sarcasm as he’s probably capable of. 

Whiskey taps his knuckles on the tabletop, next to his now-empty coffee mug, and nods to the counter. Eggsy’s retort dies in his throat as he glances around. One of the waitresses is cleaning the countertop at a remarkably slow pace. The nearest cluster of customers are gossipping, too quiet to hear.

Eggsy hasn’t said anything incriminating, but drawing attention over an argument still isn’t a good idea. “Look, I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because my head is somewhere else.” 

“ _But, do you really want to stay in America?_ ” Merlin asks. 

“ _With him?_ ” Roxy doesn’t sound convinced. 

“Yeah, exactly,” Eggsy says, shakier than he hoped. 

“ _It seems like you’ve already made up your mind, Eggsy,_ ” Harry says, resigned. 

Eggsy gives the middle-distance outside the diner a nasty glare and shakes his head in frustration. “Bye.” He hangs up and pockets the phone. He doesn’t have the time to unpack that- or anything that Harry said. Harry is impossible to read when he wants to be, and it’s even easier to be distant over the phone. 

Whiskey clears his throat, dragging Eggsy’s attention back to the real world. “That sounded like a pleasant conversation,” he says with a wry smile. 

Eggsy leans forward to cross his arms on the table. “Not the nicest.” He doesn’t bother to fake a smile. 

A new car pulls into the parking lot, stirring up dirt and displacing gravel. Across the road, tall stalks of some random crop sway in a light breeze. The cloudless sky allows the sun free rein; Eggsy can almost feel the warmth of it through the window. 

“You think they’ll come around?” Whiskey asks. 

“Yeah,” Eggsy says, on instinct. They seemed fairly level-headed during the conversation, so it can’t be too bad. Probably. “They have to know what’s best for me. Right?” 

Whiskey shrugs. “Let’s hope so.” 

Eggsy manages a half-smile in return. He appreciates not being lied to, not getting an ‘I’m sure it’ll all work out’ or ‘Of course they’ll understand’ just for the sake of it. He’s prepared to fight tooth and nail for this. To explain exactly why he’s not prepared for that kind of responsibility until he works through the baggage he’s already got; until he’s honed his focus so it can be on the job and nothing else, when need be. 

But if they call an ultimatum - if they say ‘you come back to London now or you don’t come back at all’ - there’s no doubt in his mind that he’d get on the next flight back. 

Whiskey sighs and drums his fingers on the table. “They’ll figure it out. Just make sure to keep in touch and they should leave you be.” He glances away from the window, to Eggsy. “Are you okay? You look a little…” 

“Peaky?” Eggsy says, cringing at how he must look. Pasty, tired, and uneasy. He doesn’t think he could stomach much food at the moment, not until his nerves settle a bit. Sure, gunfights mightn’t faze him, but arguing with his friends always leaves his guts in knots. “Yeah, I think I’ve lost my appetite.” He twists his off-white mug by its handle, watching the cheap coffee swirl. 

“You want to skip breakfast and hit the road?” 

Eggsy grimaces. “Yeah.” He looks up from the mug, but the other agent is already out of the booth. 

Whiskey takes a faded wallet from his jacket pocket and fishes out a note. He leaves it on the table and walks off. 

Eggsy shuffles to the edge of the seat and jumps up, sneakers catching on the lino. “That coffee did _not_ cost twenty dollars.” 

Whiskey throws a sideways glance over his shoulder. “Tips, kid. Remember what those are?” He throws open the diner door wide enough so that Eggsy doesn’t have to catch it. 

“Still.” Tips are generally, what, fifteen or twenty-something percent? A ten or fifteen dollar tip doesn’t exactly seem like the norm. 

“I didn’t know they paid you peanuts at Kingsman. That’s so sad,” Whiskey says mockingly as he unlocks the car. 

Eggsy takes a few faster steps and spins to block Whiskey’s path. “Hey, when do I get to drive?” he asks, just to change the subject. Anything besides Kingsman will do. 

“Whenever you ask,” Whiskey says, with an easy smile. He sidesteps Eggsy to continue across the asphalt, past the empty parking spots to the car. The black paint and metallic details gleam in the sun despite the dirt on the lower third of the car. 

“Can I-” Eggsy rolls of his eyes and follows along. He shuts up to catch the keyring that Whiskey throws at him. There’s an apology rattling around in his head, half-formed and contradicting. He wants to explain how he went on autopilot, that the world was in danger and he knew he could trust Kingsman, despite the fact that one of three remaining agents was unhinged. Eggsy gets the feeling Whiskey doesn't want to hear it. 

The air feels warmer than it really is, with the bright sunlight and unmoving air. Eggsy climbs into the car, nervous energy sapped when the doors close and the seatbelts click in. The car rumbles to life after the first twist of the key, matching the thrum of anticipation in his veins. 

Whiskey taps his fingers against the door, waiting. He catches Eggsy looking - waiting as well, maybe - and offers a half-smile. “Turn right out of the parking lot, go two miles, then turn left,” he says, pointing with his free hand. “I’ll tell you when. Got it?” 

Eggsy returns the smile and puts the car into first gear. “Got it.” 

-

Late that afternoon, Eggsy goes outside to recon the property just as he did with the house, twice. It half-works; he sticks to the fire trail that begins by the chicken coop and weaves throughout the tree-laden land. It goes past the large vegetable garden and the mini-orchard, which apparently needs pruning. Most of the trees beyond them are evergreen, but enough are deciduous to give a solid layer of dead leaflitter. 

The trail should be nice for a morning jog, tomorrow. When the air is a little cooler and the sky streaked orange and pink, instead of the greyish cloud cover it has now. He’d hoped for a clear night, to see the stars better than in the cities, but the rain might be nice too. Might inject some life into the sadder-looking plants, rather than flood sewers and turn the street-grime slick, like back home. 

He’s already made it to the end of the trail and doubled-back, jogging just enough to add a slight burn to every other breath. He can see the house through the trees, patches of the two storeys of white-painted brick, with its chimney barely smoking. Whiskey - _we’re living under the same roof now, you can call me Jack_ \- must have woken up from his post-shopping nap. Eggsy was too wired to sleep, so he did a self-guided tour of the house and changed clothes to survey the property. 

They got through the clothes- and grocery-shopping in record time, considering they had to stock a kitchen from scratch, almost, and get Eggsy a whole new set of clothes. He chose things that hark back to the way he’s dressed for most of his life, while the Kingsman suit is tucked away in the back of his closet. Back home in the U.K., Eggsy didn’t mind hanging around the local shopping centre’s food court with his friends before they graduated to pubs, but going there today felt like a time-suck. 

Jack strongly advised against buying all frozen meals, like Eggsy did back home. Considering their new access to fresh produce, it’d be a false economy, apparently. Eggsy has no good idea how to cook, but Jack claims to, so the frozen boxes were returned to the freezers without a fight. If it’s a shitshow, he’s one hundred percent prepared to blame Jack. 

Eggsy’s phone beeps in the pocket of his hoodie and his right foot slips off the gravel, crunching dead leaves. He fishes his phone out and hops back to the middle of the path. 

_Roxy:_

_> >> Just landed at the old airstrip. Call you soon?_

He slows his pace to a brisk walk and types a reply. 

_< << yeah. nice flight?_

He gets an answer almost instantly. A drop of rain hits the back of his neck, then another. 

_> >> Awkward as fuck_

_> >> You’re so dead for making me sit through that._

_< << talk soon. in the middle of a jog rn_

_> >> Trip and fall_

Eggsy chuckles and pockets his phone. He does his best to avoid tripping as he races back to the house. His sneakers catch on the gravel and the wind picks up, rustling the pine needles all around him. 

He doesn’t make it back before the rain really starts to fall, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Some of the dialogue has been chopped and edited a bit, so apologies for any mistakes, they're 100% mine. I have no concept of distance or area, so if it sounds like there's too much stuff for 12 acres, I'm prepared to change that.
> 
> Side-note: I really appreciate feedback, and I'm fine if that's concrit (I'm always trying to improve my writing, so).
> 
> I've got at least one more fic for this series in the works, and it'll be a 5+1 thing so I'm aiming for around 6k words at least, but we'll see. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr over [here](https://band-fictionality.tumblr.com/), feel free to ask me questions, including "When are you going to update, jerk?".
> 
> P.S. In Australia, Wellington boots are called gumboots, but the internet says the British form is Wellies, so. I'm 98% sure that's right.


End file.
